Traveling with firearms is a fascinating experience.
First, you need some interesting equipment. Your firearms have to be completely contained in a hard sided case, with appropriate latching mechanisms, and locks. Your firearms must be unloaded. Even if you don’t have a round in the chamber, a magazine in the pistol with ammo in it constitutes a loaded firearm. Given this, I have chosen to travel with unloaded magazines. But you can have ammunition in the same case as the firearms. The ammo has to in a box that separates the cartridges so they are not touching each other. All of this is detailed by your airline as well as by the TSA.
Here’s what that looks like:
A Pelican Vault
Pelican Vault with two pistols
Pelican Vault with ABUS padlocks
Now, once you’ve got that, and you are ready to travel, you have to check in with your airline with a specialty item. At the airport, the airline will have a special line for checking speciality items, pets, etc. You have to declare to the agent that you have firearms, open your case for the agent to see them, and sign a declaration that they are unloaded. Once that is done, you will take your firearms case to TSA. This process takes about 30 minutes at SeaTac.
TSA will have a special location for you to check your firearms with them after you are done with the airline. At SeaTac this is the same location where oversize luggage, like golf clubs, get dropped off. There, you will open the case again and a TSA officer will inspect everything. And, for some reason, they swab the whole case for explosives. You have to verbally declare that the firearms are unloaded, the TSA person checks your signed declaration and then you lock the case and hand it off to TSA. That’s kinda nerve wracking since I don’t ever leave my firearms unsupervised except at home in the gun safe.
When you get to your destination and have picked up all your other luggage (if need be), then you go to the airline’s baggage services office. This time I was flying with Delta, who has a policy that the case must be zip tied and escorted by airport police. A very nice police officer checked my identification at the destination, handed over my case and told me about the Delta policy. We joked a bit about whether he could cut off the zip tie for me (he can’t) and then I headed off to my hotel.
Zip tied Pelican Vault
Once I got to my hotel, I had a dilemma. To make life easier, my EDC knife was also in the case. Which I needed to cut the zip tie. Fortunately, a very nice hotel clerk went and found a pair of scissors for me. All set.
And now I’m in Phoenix, ready for the Gun Rights Policy Conference. That starts tonight with an opening reception. And I’m able to exercise my fundamental rights to self-defense and to keep and bear arms. Not as difficult as I thought, but not as easy as it could be.
Last but not least, you need to safeguard things in your hotel room. For that, I have a Vaultek Lifepod, the Pelican Vault, 2 ABUS padlocks, and a cable to secure everything to something sturdy. Like this
Hotel room security setup
Here’s the gear I have for firearms travel.
- Pelican Vault V200 – I cut the foam myself
- Vaultek Lifepod 2.0
- 2 ABUS 8840C padlocks, keyed separately
Make sure that you know the laws of the destination you are traveling to, the rules that your airline has for traveling with firearms, and TSA rules. Goofing on anyone of those can land you in prison. So, don’t do it if you don’t know the rules and are prepared to follow them.
I’ve never flown with a firearm, but I would consider putting in an Apple AirTag or other such device just in case the firearm did not make it to its destination.
Wow, and here I just bought my Vault 200 for my first airplane trip* with firearms in a couple of weeks.
The one question I have concerns putting the Vault into another piece of baggage. It seemed OK based on what I read (both airline and TSA websites). I guess I better call – rules are one thing, interpretations are another, and this smells of interpretation.
(* First civilian. I’ve done civilian charter flight for the military thing, as well as, of course, military aircraft. But we just follow orders on those flights.)
Nice 1911s in the Vault. Were the other magazines in the second layer down of foam?
BTW, it’s amazing some of the things the TSA fears when it comes to guns. ANY part of a gun, no matter how small or inconsequential, can go in your carry-on. Not even a magazine. (I presume that’s because they assume they’ll miss the guy bringing the frame and the other guy bringing the slide at the security theater checkpoint.)
Any recommendations on cutting the foam?
Sheesh – NO part of a gun.
I really should do parentheticals after writing the rest of the sentence.
From what I understand, you can pack the gun case in a suitcase and check that. But double check. I don’t, I like to keep things as simple as possible 🙂
I cut the foam with a very sharp pocket knife. There are some decent videos on YouTube of the process. And yes, mags are next layer down
The one inside another IS the simple answer for me. Or so it seems. That way I only have one thing to transport.
But the TSA might complicate that and make the other way easier. I’m going to get there very early and be flexible.
Thanks for the info.
The way it works in Seattle, I just keep my gun case separate from my suitcase
Use an electric carving knife, the kind some people use for turkey. BTW, don’t beat yourself up if it ends up looking like the dog’s breakfast. It’s nearly impossible to achieve perfection, but if you do it right it will be functional.
Yeah, I’ve seen that some folks do that.
I can’t tell you HOW many times I’ve read both Delta’s and the TSA’a site to clearly understand the rules of flying with a checked firearm. The TSA is close to clear but reading Delta’s is contradictory if read plainly. Yeah, I’ll follow their rules but, I’d call the (chosen) airline before I packed and I WOULD NOT, under ANY circumstance, fly with my nicest handgun. I’d pack a Taurus or a low-level firearm because the TSA (like numerous other federal agencies) still has a tendency to not be accountable.
Delta’s website is convoluted on this …. And most ….. topic. But, really, the hardest piece of this is figuring out how and where to check your firearm with Delta. In Seattle, with Delta, you must go to the Agent Assist line, not a regular baggage check Agent.
You forgot one important thing. If your flight gets redirected because of weather or whatever, and you land in someplace like New Jersey, do NOT pick up your firearm from the airline. Continue on to your destination and then report the firearm as lost. The airline will then take care of getting it back to you as they do not want to be responsible for it.
Well, really there is a ton of stuff like that I could go into but didn’t want to because it’s a blog post, not a book.
I routinely fly Delta with a firearm. My luggage is a hard sided Pelican case that I would throw in a soft pistol rug with my firearm. I traveled this way for several years until I had two instances where the agent and manager wrongly insisted the pistol itself needed to be in a separate hardsided case. Now I put my pistol in a small metal safe. SeaTac and Phoenix are the only airports that insist on opening, inspecting, and swabbing luggage.
Two of the airports I most routinely fly in and out of with firearms
I fly all the time with a firearm. I fly with the mag loaded (minus one) for ease of insertion at the destination. Have NEVER hand to ziplock the already locked case. Bullets in the mags. Mags outside of the gun AND a box of ammo as well, on many occasions. The locked pistol case goes in the suitcase with a airport supplied ID card taped to the gun case. Has name, address, phone number, etc. Once they called me because the didn’t realize my case had two guns in it, one on the top side of the case and one on the bottom (separated by foam) . Apparently they couldn’t figure that out from the low resolution x ray machine and I had to be there when they opened it. Sheepish look and a thumbs up after relocking it and giving me back my keys.
Flying with rifles is a bit different. Once had a gate attendant want me to pull the AR (chambered in 458 Socom) out of the case, hold it up in the air and show chamber clear. Uhh NO. Held me up for about 10 minutes. Security and airport cops were called. Over the phone / radio the cop VERY adamantly told her NOT to require that as someone would get shot. Something I had been saying for about 9 minutes.
There is no way I would pick up a gun in an airport in the manner that gate agent wanted you to do.
“You forgot one important thing. If your flight gets redirected because of weather or whatever, and you land in someplace like New Jersey, do NOT pick up your firearm from the airline. Continue on to your destination and then report the firearm as lost. The airline will then take care of getting it back to you as they do not want to be responsible for it.”
Good point. I would probably add NY, and esp NYC, airports. They have arrested people who picked up their checked firearms because they didn’t have the proper permits. Of course they didn’t – the arrested passengers had had no intent in spending the night or picking up their luggage at the airport.
And so my point that you have to know the laws, rules, and regulations if you travel with firearms
take a nail clipper with you in your carry on. use it to cut the zip tie. I believe you can put the Firearm tag inside the case. It doesn’t have to be on the outside.
I hadn’t expected that zip tie. It’s kind of new rule on Delta. The cop was nice about it
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Drive
Or you can drive and skip the whole TSA thing.
two points on that. First is that there are many states I wouldn’t want to drive through with firearms, regardless of Federal law allowing transportation of firearms. NY, NJ, IL for sure. Second is that time is an issue. From where I live in WA to Phoenix, is a 1500 mile drive that would take me at least 2 days. I’d have to avoid CA for obvious reasons, which means it’s a bit longer drive. Driving would have made this a 6-7 day trip instead of 4 days.
Casper Wyoming is much more benign. The empty gun and empty mags go in the locked case which goes inside my luggage. The plastic box with the ammo goes into one of my boots and stuffed with socks (also in the same luggage). The airport is small go the detector machine through which all the luggage goes is right there at the check in counter.
When I fly in and out of regionals, especially mountain and Midwest states, it’s that easy. But my home airport is Seattle. And that is always as painful as I described